Ad Astra
by Zefyria Nuva
Summary: You find it almost funny sometimes, how there can be so many things that are strange and new to you in a realm made up of memories. /Calliope'centric. Oneshot.\


Inspired by a beautiful piece of artwork by tumblr user **happyds **that I cannot link to here. For mood music, listen to the Homestuck Vol. 9 track Stargaze.

* * *

It is very quiet here.

It doesn't bother you much. You are accustomed to silence. This particular flavor of quietude is a little different than what you're used to, but the differences make it interesting, instead of unnerving. You've never heard the buzzing of insects before, or the rustle of wind through grass. You like the sound of it. You like the cool, crisp taste of the air, and the way it nips at your cheeks and the tips of your fingers. You lift you head as an unfamiliar scent wafts toward you. By now you've learned to recognize this sort of heady lightness. There must be a bed of wildflowers nearby. It's very nice.

It won't last. Nothing here remains stable for long.

The hills before you crest and roll in dark swells as far as you can see. You suppose the grass is green, but you can't really tell in this light. The horizon is only just beginning to pale into a creamy orange-red. The rest of the sky is still shrouded in a ripple of inky blue-black silk. There are stars overhead, but you don't recognize any of the constellations. You expected as much. This isn't your memory, after all.

You find it almost funny sometimes, how there can be so many things that are strange and new to you in a realm made up of memories.

You can't remember how long you've been sitting here. Time has little meaning in this place—and time was never really your forte to begin with. You have the sneaking suspicion that you have already spent more time here than you can afford. You'll have to move soon. You don't want to be here when _he _arrives. But you've been running for such a long time now (or so you think, but...well, _temporal shenanigans_). You deserve to take a break. Enjoy yourself for once. Right?

You would roll your eyes, but considering your current situation, that would be rather pointless.

Blood pools against the horizon. The stain blooms with inexorable slowness up the dark silk shroud. Dark crimson runs outward in rivulets, flowing along the path of least resistance, lighting up the hairline cracks that had before now been nearly invisible. You wonder who could have had the heart to wound such a beautiful thing. But you don't really have to wonder at all. You already know the answer.

You felt it, when it happened. How could you not? You have the deepest connection to your aspect possible, for a player who had no chance at reaching god tier. It was as though he had ripped a hole through your own chest. The pain doubled you over, and your journey nearly ended there. You weren't certain you could continue for a very long time. You weren't even certain you wanted to.

You continued anyway.

No one ever said you were a selfless creature. You brought your first death upon yourself, but you still don't particularly want to die a second time.

It wouldn't matter anyway, you tell yourself. You are a threat to him, but you aren't so arrogant as to think your elimination is is sole objective. Even if he did find you, his path of destruction wouldn't stop there. He would continue onward until there was nothing left, and then turn time back so that he could do it again, and again, and again...

And really, if you are quite honest, you are simply too attached to what shreds of "life" you have left to risk losing them like this.

The sun is just beginning to heave itself up over the horizon. It labors and trembles like a gaping wound, wide and red and close. Beneath its harsh glare, you can already see rust tainting the hills as the grass crumbles away into sand. Whoever owns this memory must be long gone.

You wish you could have found them before they left. They might have been an interesting character to speak to. Who knows what kinds of interesting stories they might have had to tell? Who knows what important lessons they might have learned in the past that they would be willing to share? People could be so wonderful. They could be equally terrible sometimes, but that was part of what made them so wonderful. The fact that they could all be so different, and still be so very much alike.

Perhaps they were a troll. Perhaps this grass isn't green at all, but blue. Perhaps it is even purple or red. Grasses come in many different hues on Alternia, you have learned, depending on the mineral content of the soil and depending on the types of light they feed on. Perhaps the owner of this memory ran wild here with their lusus, faster and faster, until they tripped and tumbled to a stop. Perhaps, once they hit the bottom of the hill, they crawled to the top of the next and fell to the grass, staring up at their stars with exultation still flooding their veins.

Perhaps they were human. Perhaps they sat here once, the way you are sitting now, pondering whatever secret thoughts they held close in their heart. Perhaps they were here one night, tracing their constellations with familiar fondness, when a meteor streaked across the sky, carving a bright scar across dark skin. Perhaps more came after that. A meteor shower. The safe kind, of course. The kind that didn't herald the beginning of a session and the end of the world.

Whoever they are, they are gone now. The dream is shifting. The sun climbs higher, and the wind scraping your cheeks is now hot and dry. Sand eddies and swirls around you, dancing in the arid heat. The grass beneath you crackles, dries, disintegrates. The sky is not blue, but the dark, sullen orange-red that is so familiar.

You dig your fingers into the rust-red sand, letting it slip through your fingers. It is coarse and rough. You know the texture well. Despite your best efforts to the contrary, you always had to sweep sand out of your home. He tended to leave the hatch open far too often for your liking.

You stand. You still half-expect to feel muscles stretch and pull, or to be sore from sitting in one place for so long. Then you remember that you are dead.

You are at the very outskirts of his influence, you think. The cracks in the sky are barely visible, pulsing orange-red in the shivering, ancient sunlight. You don't know what direction he is going, but for now, you can only assume he is not coming this way. There is no way to be certain, however. Not until he strikes again and the wounds in the fabric of the universe become even more pronounced.

You would rather not be in the way when it happens.

As much as you would prefer to linger here in hopes of meeting some wanderer such as yourself, the time has come for you to move on. Maybe in another bubble you will find someone to keep you company. Maybe in the next memory you will find someone who will have the heart to speak to you. Maybe the next fragment will not be so very void of life.

You can always hope.


End file.
